A Blog of Personal Essays and Reflections on Grammar and Writing

Basket of Deplorables

Hillary Clinton’s use of the term “basket of deplorables” to describe half of Donald Trump’s supporters is puzzling. Baskets don’t generally come large enough to hold large numbers of people, deplorable or not, and “deplorables” is an oddly mild pejorative to describe Trump’s supporters. Head colds are deplorable. Complaining that half of Trump’s supporters are “deplorables” is like complaining that Hitler didn’t cover his mouth when he yawned. “Deplorables” doesn’t begin to cover it.

If we’re going to talk about Trump’s supporters, I would say a fair number could be described as a sewer full of despicable, race-baiting rats. Many others could be described as a gaggle of mean-spirited halfwits. I assume that some are good people.

But perhaps most despicable of all are Trump’s hired guns who appear on cable TV shows to play the little game of pretending Trump is a normal candidate. These political prostitutes probably don’t believe a word Trump says but are more than willing to risk the good of the nation by promoting his hateful agenda for pay. They might try to justify what amounts to national treason by telling themselves that there is little risk of his winning, but even if he doesn’t win, they are complicit in creating a threatening atmosphere for minorities that won’t go away soon and is already evident in increased bullying of Latino and Muslim kids in playgrounds.

That a con artist and fraud like Donald Trump has managed to capture the Republican nomination is devastating for American democracy even if he has little chance of winning the presidency. Hillary Clinton supposedly made a gaffe with her “basket of deplorables.” The “gaffe” is so laughably timid, that it should embolden everybody, especially those in the media, to start describing Trump and his supporters in terms strong enough to have the ring of truth. Enough of the phony respect for a despicable clown and his circus.

Clinton’s ‘Basket of Deplorables” comment makes a lot more sense in context. But it also illustrates how using complete sentences is antithetical to political communication these days.

Trump, on the other hand, operates almost entirely in sentence fragments. Reporters complete his sentences in order to elicit meaning. That gives Trump the opportunity to deny his egregious statements while reporters are distracted from actually checking facts.